style="font-size:15px;"> “Bidganeh, Amir. Major Zarin is working on a small project for me and I’ll need to see him later this afternoon so let’s just head to the base.”
The drive to the base took about half an hour longer than to where Rafsanjani had his office at the Ministry of Intelligence in Tehran so he came prepared for the ride: Rafsanjani already had his new iPad open and began trying to get caught up on several items he had hoped to get done yesterday. Jalili’s call and new assignment had taken up his entire day, leaving him a day behind on his latest project.
Amir interrupted his concentration as they approached the halfway point to the base. “Colonel? Excuse me, sir. Major Zarin is on the phone for you. He said something about an explosion over at the Botanical Gardens.”
“The Botanical Gardens? There’s nothing over there; who wants to blow up a bunch of trees? Give me the phone. Major, what’s going on? Amir mentioned something about an explosion over in the Botanical Gardens. There’s nothing over there.”
“Sir, Dr. Ali Bagheri lives over by the gardens. Would the Israelis be targeting him?”
“Amir, turn around and let’s head over to there. Farrok, get me Bagheri’s address. We are on our way over there now but it’ll take us forty-five minutes to even get in the general area – the traffic is awful. Send me a text with Bagheri’s address as soon as you can.”
“Will do, sir; I’ll get it to you right away.”
“Here you are, sir. Bagheri currently lives in a resort area of Bashgah-e Savarkri-e, which is actually a part of the National Botanical Gardens.”
Rafsanjani could tell that the explosion had come from the resort area of the gardens as they passed through the east entrance. The remnant wisps of a heavy smoke plume rising from that area, as Farrok had indicated, clearly indicated a massive fire had raged here. The local police already had established a cordon about a quarter mile from Bagheri’s residence, or what remained of it. However, being a colonel in the Quds Force has its privileges. One of which is ready access to catastrophic scenes such as that posed by the horrific scene of what once was Ali Bagheri’s residence and surrounding yard – there was nothing left of the house but a huge crater and scattered and charred debris of what once was the residence of the Islamic Republic’s Deputy Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. The incident commander had already relayed that two bodies had been discovered though identifying who they were would require contacting a few dentists. There simply wasn’t enough left to visually identify the bodies. Rafsanjani inquired about any other corpses and the commander indicated that they had only found the two but, given the extent of the devastation – and the still smoldering fire amongst the vegetation – there was no telling if they would ever know just how many might have been at the home. Clearly, Dr. Bagheri had been assassinated, Rafsanjani thought, as no one had heard from him as yet and at this hour of the morning, he should have either been at his office or have been in contact with someone from his security detail. He did not need the commander’s expertise to tell him that this was not an ordinary explosion: the size of the crater, and its location immediately adjacent to the house, clearly implied something other than an accident. The list of suspects would not be a long one. It would take time to determine just who had assassinated the deputy secretary, though he had a good idea who would be at the top of the list.
“Major, I want you to start your search with the deputy secretary’s office,” Rafsanjani said over his cell phone.
“Surely you don’t suspect the deputy secretary?” replied Major Zarin.
“No, the deputy secretary is dead; there is no way anyone could have survived that blast, and not even Netanyahu would be cynical enough to kill his source. However, this is the only unusual or irregular thing to occur that is really out of the ordinary. We need to track down any loose end that might come out of Bagheri’s office, no matter how remote the possibility could be – you said it yourself just yesterday: did anyone in the office make any calls to a totally different number, even if they turned out to be a wrong number? What about email correspondence? Are there any emails that might look like SPAM or junk emails? Is anyone in the office planning a family vacation out of the country – I want you to track everything down no matter how small it might seem. I’m sure the Israelis are involved in this in some manner; the only question is how. I’m going straight to the Ministry to see Secretary Jalili. I’d expect to be out to the base later today and will talk to you then.”
Rafsanjani quickly realized that there was no point in his hanging around what used to be Ali Bagheri’s residence. They had professionals already assigned to dig through the rubble and search for any remaining bodies. Rafsanjani did not need to take part in that. He told Amir to head immediately to Said Jalili’ s office at the Supreme National Security Council’s office downtown. He knew Jalili would demand an update from him even though he had absolutely no jurisdiction in the assassination. However, he already had Major Zarin chasing down any leads from Bagheri’s office personnel to see if his assassination could be connected in any way with Netanyahu’s speech. He really didn’t see how, but he knew that is exactly the situation that would arise in their search for the traitor, whoever it might be.
Rafsanjani found Jalili completely shocked by Bagheri’s assassination – and furious – Bagheri was his deputy. “Colonel,” Jalili began, “just how bad is it?”
“The devastation could not be more incredible. They used enough explosives to bring down this building.”
“Any chance of survivors?”
“None; there’s no way anyone could have survived that blast. The local fire officials found two bodies so far and I think they were lucky to find them. It’s too soon to begin looking at reconstructing this but we’ll begin that tomorrow if we can, certainly by the day after, and that will give us a better idea of what actually happened. Do we know if there had been any threats towards Bagheri? I mean, taking him out serves absolutely no purpose.”
“Ali Bagheri was our leading negotiator with the West regarding our nuclear ambitions. To think the Europeans would be involved in this? – totally ridiculous; certainly not the Russians or the Chinese. The Americans right now are simply out of the picture on the International front. That leaves the Israelis, who incidentally are not a part of the negotiations. I can easily see them trying to derail the negotiations to try and prove a point but even for them, this would be an extremely dangerous game.”
“Okay, well, I’ll get back over there tomorrow and see if we can begin to get to work reconstructing this thing to see just how powerful this bomb was, where it came from, and all that. I’ll keep you posted as things develop.”
“Do that. For the next few days, this is your first priority. Turn over everything else to Major Zarin.”
“I’ve already done that; see you tomorrow.”
VI
Several thousand miles away, Jim Carmichael received a phone call at home from his signals people. “Sir, we are receiving word of a detonation just outside of Tehran. From the looks of it, this happened within the hour.”
“Do we have any details on this as yet?”
“Sir, it’s conventional, but it’s huge. Brigadier General John Anderson out at Cheyenne Mountain called in the initial report. If they picked it up, it had to be big. Looks like someone took out an entire city block on the outskirts of Tehran. Preliminary reports are saying
